Side Effects
by KHCrazy
Summary: Set post-TRACKS. Agent Ward knows that his Rookie may not make it through the night, so he has to have some time alone with her, just in case. What he doesn't know is that she can hear him. Future chapters will be less angsty. Multi-chapter. R&R is appreciated.
1. Chapter 1

**Hi there! So I'm back with an Agents of SHIELD fic! It is post-TRACKS. So, naturally, there will be spoilers for TRACKS [01x13], and the next chapter will have spoilers for TAHITI [01x14]. This idea had been floating around in my head since I saw the episode, I just hadn't been able to put it in words until now. Um.. There's two main ships for this fic, SkyeWard, which is the really main one, and FitzSimmons, which is a little less prominent in this chapter, but should crop up a lot more in later chapters. So yes, R&R would be appreciated, and I hope you enjoy the chapter!**

**-KHC**

* * *

Simmons ripped open a packet of cotton wool from the medical supplies room, her hands shaking uncontrollably. Her breath came in sharply as she tried to scrub Skye's blood off her hands. The events of the day were catching up to her, crashing over her head all at once in a huge tidal wave. She gritted her teeth together and felt the warm tears boil up into her eyes. She heard footsteps follow her into the room, and the moment she felt Fitz's familiar comforting hand on her shoulder, she turned to him, looking at him before choking out, "Oh, Fitz…"

Fitz moved his arms so that he could cradle Simmons to his chest, allowing her to cry, resting his chin on the top of her head reassuringly, kissing the top of her head as he waited for her heavy sobs to turn to soft sniffles.

Meanwhile in the garage of the Bus, Ward was staring blankly into the lab. May had long since left his side, knowing that trying to speak with him was a useless idea. After a while he shifted his eyes to where Agent Coulson was standing over the large metal chamber where Skye's temperature was being maintained. Skye, enclosed inside, barely hung onto life. It was a long time before Agent Coulson left. It was clear he felt an innumerable amount of guilt, and frankly, Ward felt the same way. His words replayed constantly in his head. _She shouldn't have gone in there alone, she shouldn't have gone in there alone, she shouldn't have gone in there alone. _Grant Ward had always considered himself indestructible. Immune to feelings or fear.

He realized now, that he was not. If feelings did not affect him, to Skye getting wounded. In a fit of anger, he banged another dent in the SHIELD vehicle. At the sudden noise, Coulson flinched and turned. His eyes were rimmed in red, or so Ward noticed as he straightened his dress jacket and tie. He looked straight at Ward as he walked out of the lab, the doors sliding shut behind him. He dipped his head solemnly at Ward, and then jogged up the spiraling stairs to the furnished area of the Bus.

This left Ward alone with the woman he was supposed to protect. And, as much as he hated to admit it, the woman he had slowly been falling in love with. He finally realized why he sought out Agent May: he needed to stop falling in love. He knew now that any resistance on his part was futile. His Rookie meant the world to him, and at that moment he knew he could not let her go. Ian Quinn had to answer for what he did; he only wished that he could be the one to make him do so.

For the first time, Ward looked at Skye's face, rather than her wounds, and he really wished he hadn't. She was as white as a sheet, her lips a soft bluish color. Her dark hair was thrown around her face like a crown, which was covered in dried blood, sweat, and running makeup. It emotionally injured him to see her like this. It was a stronger possibility that she would die rather than live, or so Simmons said. Well, tried to say. Fitz had to say it for her; her speech was too tight with tears to understand. Apparently, the bullets had punctured her stomach and both intestines, deadly shots.

Ward gritted his teeth. "God, Skye. You had to go in there alone. Why couldn't you have waited outside with Fitz, huh?" He blinked hard, and was only able to manage a few more words. "Was that too hard for you to accomplish?" And then, he did something very un-Ward-like. He began to cry. He could not remember the last time he had cried over an Agent. Perhaps he hadn't. But he knew that he didn't like the feeling. The tears came softly and silently. In desperation, he tried to make the tears stop, but they just kept coming. He placed a hand over his eyes, the other on his knee, hoping no one would see the light shake of his shoulders or heart the soft gasps of breath coming from his mouth as the events of the day finally sank in.

Underneath the glass chamber, one of Skye's fingers twitched. She could hear Ward from behind the glass, and more than anything she wished she couldn't. She wanted to reach out and punch his arm playfully, to tease him as she would on a normal day. She wanted to say, "So, my S.O. isn't a robot after all!" with one of those winning smiles she saved just for him. But she couldn't. She felt trapped in between life and death. She wanted to show her team, her _family_, that she was going to be okay. That they shouldn't cry, shouldn't worry.

However, she wasn't even sure if she was going to be okay. So she lay in the chamber listening painfully as her S.O.'s muffled cries went on for what seemed like an eternity. After a while, a soft exchange went on between Ward and one other person Skye could not recognize. She had a feeling it was Agent May, however their voice was so soft that she could not place it to a face.

Then there was silence. When Ward and Coulson were there, she could bear the silence, because there was sound. Now, the silence was excruciating, and the dread had returned again to haunt her. The nightmares came in fragments, torn apart by the pain emanating from her abdomen, silent. The sound came later.

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**I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I hope to get the next one up tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, sometime next week, if I have time! Thanks for reading! **


	2. Chapter 2

**Thank you _so_ much for all the favorites, follows, and reviews! It means a lot to me!  
****This chapter has a _teensy_ spoiler for TAHITI [01x14]. Oh, and there's more FitzSimmons, for the lack of it in the last chapter. There's some SkyeWard in there as well.  
I don't own Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, that belongs to the wonderful Marvel Studios!**

**-KHC**

* * *

Skye shot awake with a huge gasp, as if she were surfacing from underwater. Her eyes snapped open, and her heavily dilated pupils began narrowed rapidly. She recoiled from the sterile white light, and waited for her heart to calm down. She lifted her head briefly when her eyes adjusted to the light, mainly to examine the room. She felt a tug on her chest and realized had tubes sticking out her, of which were wired up into a huge machine. When she had pieced together the fact that she was in a bed, she let her head fall back onto the pillow, sighing as she closed her eyes. She was terrified. Where was her team? Where had they offloaded her? Had they offloaded her at all? Did they just not care? Why wasn't anyone at her side when she woke up? The possibilities escalated until it led to the beginnings of a fully-fledged panic attack. It closed in on her; crushing her chest and making her feel as if her stomach had dropped down to her toes. The panic soon turned to nausea and she closed her eyes and reminded herself that they wouldn't leave her; they cared about her… right? With these self-administered words of comfort, she calmed down a little bit, relying on her eyelids to escape the blinding white light. She didn't expect to fall asleep, but eventually her eyes grew heavy and she sank into the pillows, and sleep took her into its unexpected embrace.

When she next woke up, all the medical equipment that had been in her mouth, down her throat, and stuck on her chest were gone; replaced by a cannula, making sure she got enough oxygen. Sunlight was filtering through the windows of the room she was in, filling the room with a soft yellow light rather than the bright whiteness of the lightbulbs. The next thing she noticed was that she was in a closed off room, her bed on one length of the wall, a counter on the opposite one. It had medical instruments strewn on the surface. She tried to pull herself into a more comfortable position, but realized quickly what a bad idea it was, as a sharp twinge in her abdomen made her withdraw to her original position.

Back in the lab, Simmons had fallen asleep while keeping an eye on Skye. For the past two days that Skye had been recovering, Simmons kept watch from inside hers and Fitz's lab, and she'd successfully been able to achieve the feat with multiple cups of coffee and habitual cold-water face washes. Fitz had offered to stay up with her many times, insisting Skye's injury was his fault and therefore his responsibility to monitor her. Simmons would smile and say, "Oh, Fitz, it's nobody's fault. And besides, who's the biochemist here? I'll call you if she wakes up a cyborg." She would then end with a cheery, "Goodnight!"

Despite all the coffee and face washes, Simmons had failed to stay awake three nights in a row. She'd nodded off while reading her textbook, her arms functioning as a pillow. The sunlight that was hitting her square in the face didn't disturb her beep slumber, and it took many constant repetitions of her name to wake her. "Jemma… Jemma… _Jemmaaa…" _

Simmons' eyes opened to Fitz's hand pawing at her cheek lightly. She sat up, her back aching from being hunched over a book all night. When she saw sunlight filtering in from outside, she began to panic. "Oh, God, Fitz! What time is it?"

"Oh, uh…" Fitz flipped his wrist over to check the time on his watch. "About 8:30, I think."

"Oh, Coulson'll be furious!" She cried, slamming her textbook closed. "He gave me direct orders to check on Skye in person an hour ago!"

"I thought I'd go." Fitz said as he puffed his chest out proudly. "To, you know, check if she's a cyborg yet. Who knows what was in that medicine. It could've been some nasty bug that turns all your tendons and muscle to metal." Fitz said jokingly.

"Oh, Fitz, you're a lifesaver!" Simmons said, forgetting about her aching back as she stood up to give Fitz a quick peck on the cheek before scurrying over to the holoboard, which doubled as her research computer. "Okay, I need you to tell me if she was awake or not."

Fitz, blushing furiously, replied, "N…" He cleared his throat, "No, but I think she did wake up earlier, cause her sheets were messy."

"Well I suppose we are keeping her under video surveillance." Simmons said, looking at the live footage of Skye's bedroom, where she was fast asleep, her chest rising and falling at a normal rate. Simmons pressed a few buttons and rewound the tape to a little before seven in the morning. It showed that over an elapsed period of time, she had woken up and examined her chambers before trying to move around when the drugs combined with exhaustion had pulled her back under. "She's okay, then." Simmons said. She picked up the textbook on the desk and tucked it under her arm. "I'm going to go and wait for her to wake up, which should be soon. See ya."

Simmons closed the lab doors and navigated through the Bus, which seemed pretty desolate. She passed the cockpit and saw May, who was already up and about for the day; dark tinted aviator glasses perched on her nose. May wasn't at the top of the list of her favorite people; in fact she scared her quite a lot. She looked away from the cockpit and concentrated on the course down to Skye's chambers. When she finally arrived to Skye's room, she was surprised to see the chair she would have been waiting in occupied by none other than Ward. She knocked on the open door. "Knock knock."

Ward didn't flinch when he heard the knock, and turned back to Simmons. "Oh, um… hey." He hesitated, before speaking again. "Thanks for listening to me the other day, when Skye was…"

"Really, it was my pleasure." She placed the textbook down on the counter gently. "We all felt that way." She pinched her lips together. "So how long have you been down here? Can I relieve you?"

Ward shook his head. "I'd rather be here when she wakes up."

Simmons nodded, picking up her textbook again. She did not ask Ward to elaborate on the subject. When she arrived back at the lab, Fitz looked at her. "That was a short trip, yeah?"

"Yeah, Ward insisted he stay. It didn't bother me in the least."

* * *

Ward took a leap of faith and took Skye's hand. After a few minutes, she began to stir. Ward shifted nervously in his seat, removing his hand from hers when he realized she might not like it. When she opened her eyes, she only opened them halfway, but a smile crossed her face as she mumbled, "Hey, Ward." Her voice was very hoarse, nearly too hoarse to understand.

"She speaks." Ward said.

"Did you just make a joke?" Skye asked, her smile growing from a small one to a large one, teeth and all.

"How are you feeling?" Ward asked, prompting her to chuckle again. Ward nearly grimaced at the way she laughed. He knew she was in pain, and he knew that she must feel trapped. She was Skye, she was always laughing, and now even that privilege had been taken from her.

"What is up with you, lately? Don't get me wrong, I don't mind it. It's just so not _you." _Skye said, adjusting her position a little so that she was facing him more.

"You got shot. I'm pretty sure I have a right to be concerned, as your S.O." Ward replied.

"Or maybe you just like me." Skye said. Obviously it was a joke, but Ward's reply shocked her.

"Maybe I do."

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**Sorry about the semi-cliffie. The next chapter _should _be up soon, and I hope to have some events pertaining to Yes Men [01x15], both before, during, and after. Anyway, as always, R&R is appreciated, and thanks for reading!**


	3. Chapter 3

**Wow! This is my most popular story ever, I never thought I'd be over halfway to a hundred followers! So thank you to all my followers, readers, and reviwers!  
Sorry about not posting a chapter lately. I've been extremely busy lately and I've had really bad writer's block. But now I'm back with chapter three! This doesn't have events from [01x15], Yes Men, as I assumed it would _but _it does have a reference. So yeah! I hope you enjoy! R&R is extremely appreciated!  
****I don't own Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, that belongs to the awesome Marvel Studios!**  


**-KHC**

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After a while, Skye had fallen back asleep after teasing Ward constantly about his response to her obvious joke. When he was sure she was asleep, he got up from her side and shut the door carefully, making sure he heard the reassuring click before letting go of the handle. In passing the cockpit, he made the courageous decision to tell May what had been at the front of his mind after since the incident at Quinn's mansion. When he opened the door, May made no movement to let him know that she had heard him come in, although Ward was certain she had heard him. It was only when he cleared his throat that May acknowledged him with a quick, "What?"

He took a deep breath, trying desperately to find the words to use in order not to hurt her. "I… Listen, we can't continue whatever we've been doing. It's got to stop." He surveyed her face, the face he had gotten to know so well lately, and found himself unable to read it.

May was silent for a long time. After a while, reached up and flipped the plane onto autopilot, pushing her aviators up to the top of her head and looking at Ward with cold brown eyes. "This is about Skye, isn't it?"

Ward was shocked to hear a slight tone of understanding in her voice, despite the hardness of her eyes. Nevertheless, he lied and said, "No. Absolutely not, I just think our relationship needs to be exclusively professional—"

"Grant, I can tell when you're lying." May said in the same tone. Ward refused to look into her eyes, afraid of finding that he'd hurt her. Instead, they shifted to the glowing controls at the dashboard above his head. She asked him again, in a harder voice. _"Is this about Skye?" _At her tone, Ward made eye contact, then sighed. "So what if it is?"

"Coulson will find out, and when he does, he will approach you, as he did before, tell you it's against code, and then tell you to break it off." May said flatly.

Ward wasn't why, but he was suddenly very defensive of their relationship. "Well technically she's not a part of the team—"

"Where is your head right now, Ward? Because it's not here. Coulson believes that Skye is part of this team, Fitzsimmons believes it, and I believe it. She may not have trained at the Academy, but she may as well have for the help she's brought us. Stop fooling yourself." May's tone became hostile; her shoulders tight as she pulled her glasses back to their original position at the bridge of her nose.

Ward knew he was the reason she was so belligerent, so he left her without a word, his point made with a slam of the door. May set her jaw angrily at the sound.

For a while, the central area of the Bus was silent. Soon, however, Ward heard loud argumentative science and knew that they could belong to none other than Fitzsimmons. When they saw Ward, who was swishing a strong beverage at a window seat, they stopped abruptly. He eyed them warily, telling them silently to continue, before turning back to the window and watched as the clouds formed a sea of foam underneath them.

Fitz, sensing his signal, continued to talk to his fellow scientist, but Simmons didn't seem to be listening. She shoved a box with their experiment into his arms, then said, "Go take this down to the lab. I'll be down soon. Off you pop." Fitz looked extremely uncomfortable holding the box, so Ward decided it was probably a dead animal of some sort.

Simmons lifted the pair of goggles on her face to the top of her head as she approached her friend. "Are you okay? You seem very down in the dumps."

Ward ran a hand over his face. "Ugh. It's complicated. I don't know." He looked at the biochemist. "You really don't want to hear about my problems." He saw that she was about to protest, and he smiled. "Really, Simmons, you don't." He heard a loud crash down the hall, and then glanced at Simmons again. "I think that's Fitz. You should get back to him, he doesn't do well with dead things."

A few days later, Skye had been discharged from the hospital-slash-prison that Simmons had kept her in. However, she was still called by Simmons for blood tests. "Please tell me this is the last time." Skye asked impatiently as Simmons drew more blood. "I've been better for like, a week now. I've been on missions and everything."

"Last time." Simmons said absently as she transferred the sample of blood she'd taken into a test tube, which she was going to take to the lab to test for any pathogens from the GH-325 drug. At the beginning, she hadn't found anything, and stopped taking samples of Skye's blood. After a couple of weeks, Simmons discovered that maybe she wouldn't show signs of rejecting the medicine until later, even though Coulson had showed signs of rejection quickly after it had been administered to him.

"Thank God." Skye said, reclining on the chair that Simmons had made her sit down in. She picked at the bandage that was stopping the blood flow, waiting to be dismissed, so she could get back to her laptop in her bunk. Finally, Simmons dismissed her. As she walked out of the room, Skye tried not to show her excitement. As she entered the main floor of the Bus, she accidentally ran into Ward. Ward was able to stay upright, but Skye lost her balance. Lunging forward, Ward grabbed her arm and pulled her back onto her feet. "Look at you, muscle man." Skye joked, poking him in the abdomen. "Thanks."

"Yeah…" Ward said. As Skye walked past him, he blubbered out, "Wait."

Skye turned back around, placing her hands on her hips. "Hm?"

"I still haven't apologized for… Lorelei." He said her name like it burned his tongue. Skye smiled. "I'm not sure what there is to apologize for. She was a sorceress. You couldn't help yourself." She added the next part under her breath. "Men are weak." although it was a joke, she just wanted to provoke him.

Ward caught on, and said, "Excuse me?"

"Men are weak!" she grinned, as Ward lunged at her. She jumped out of the way but was careful not to exert herself too much. Ward chased after her, his ordinary, rule-following personality completely dissolving. As she jumped over a couch with Ward at her heels, he grabbed her arm. He tripped over the sofa, and since he was holding onto her arm, brought her down with him.

They began to laugh, and Skye began to get up, Ward took his grip off her arm and tightened it around her waist, trapping her in his arms. And then, he did something that he never thought he would do: He kissed her. It was a kiss fueled by the fear he'd held in his hear at her near-death experience, the hope he'd had when she'd woken up with him at her side, and the love that he'd been developing for her from the minute he met her.

And to his surprise, Skye kissed back.

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**I hope you enjoyed! I don't know about you guys, but I am really excited for the seven weeks where we won't have some crazy hiatus. But anyway! R&R please!**


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